


Regret

by AstronautMikeDexter



Category: Homeland
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-17 17:59:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2318333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstronautMikeDexter/pseuds/AstronautMikeDexter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quinn’s list of regrets keeps growing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Regret

Quinn sits in his makeshift flat, a half-empty glass of mediocre whiskey sitting on the table in front of him. He smiles bitterly as he thinks about how much the function of alcohol has changed for him in the last few years. He can’t even remember the last time he actually drank with someone- it had probably been months. Quinn thinks back to his college years, where he’d drank to loosen up. At some point, drinking had shifted from a social activity into a way to forget. These days though, it just seemed to amplify all the shit that he couldn’t get off of his mind. 

He remembers reading somewhere that drinking alone was a sign of alcoholism, as he downs the rest of his glass. 

He said he’d be out by now... Done with the CIA for good. Quinn had known that Carrie would ask him to come to Pakistan to work under her, and he had even rehearsed his answer for days. Still, when the time came, he’d been unable to refuse her. 

Quinn slams his fist on the table, recalling the memory and cursing himself for not being stronger. He’d rationalized afterwards that he wasn’t good for much else anymore… He couldn’t think of anything he actually wanted to be doing with his life, anyway. He doubts that they ever talk about that in those shitty spy novels, what a black ops agent is supposed to do once they're done with the job. Harvard credentials be damned, it's hard to apply for a banking job when the only position on your CV for the last decade is 'assassin.' 

Now Quinn was stuck here, in a country that was hot as fuck, working for a cause he no longer believed in. All because he wanted to protect a woman who he was pretty sure didn’t give a shit about him. 

Quinn gives up on drinking from a glass; he doesn’t want to think about how much he’s had so far tonight. He grabs the bottle off his counter and takes a swig. 

Fucking Carrie. 

He’d gotten to meet her baby a few days before his flight left. That ridiculous ginger hair left no doubt in anyone’s mind who the father was, if there had been any previously. 

Fucking Brody. Fuck.

Quinn wonders what life would have been like if he pulled the trigger on Brody when he had the chance. Part of him worries that his motivations for sparing Brody were selfish at heart- Carrie was relentless when she wanted answers, and would have figured out that it had been him. He couldn’t live with the guilt of wrecking Carrie’s life (or, he muses, delaying her grief for about a year), and he also knows that she never would have forgiven him for what he’d done. But now, Quinn was stuck living with the guilt of wondering whether or not Brody might have been behind the car bomb last year. Carrie vehemently denied it, but then again her judgment had never been very sound when it came to Brody. How many lives would Quinn have saved if he’d had the guts to do what he was supposed to do that day?

Quinn smiles bitterly, imagining the eventual conversation Carrie would have with her daughter about where she came from. Is there any good way to tell your kid that their dad was a terrorist who had once strapped on a suicide bomb in an attempt to kill the vice president? 

He glances at the clock on his bookshelf as he picks up the bottle. The numbers blur together- almost 2:00am.

Quinn had been strangely nervous meeting Carrie's daughter- he hadn’t been around a baby since his son was born almost five years earlier. Carrie had seemed distracted the day of his visit, and handed the baby off to Quinn while she was thumbing through the paperwork he brought. When he’d closed his eyes, Quinn could feel himself back at the maternity ward in Philadelphia, holding baby Johnny. 

Baby Johnny, who was starting kindergarten soon. Not a baby anymore. 

He's noticed himself resenting Carrie for throwing away her chance at motherhood, abandoning her kid back in the states. Rationally, he knows he has no right to feel that way... He'd done the same thing, after all. 

When they found out she was pregnant, he and Julia had mutually agreed it would be best for him to not be involved with the baby, or for him to even know who his real father was. It was better for the kid not to have a dad, than to get attached and then have him disappear (or worse). Quinn regretted the decision every day. 

Is that when it started, this never-ending list of regrets? Quinn tries to remember if he had been happy before that. Maybe it was the alcohol talking now, but he couldn’t recall the last time he felt truly happy or at ease. He had always assumed this was par for the course, in his position. Nobody at the CIA seemed particularly happy… Misery loves company, right?

Quinn takes another drink, hoping that the numbness will set in soon and that his thoughts will stop racing.

Everywhere he goes, Quinn sees reminders of his estranged son. Walking on the street, he’ll see children about that age playing chase or walking with their mothers. He’ll wonder what his own son is up to, and imagine what his life might be like. Irrationally, Quinn still pictures him as the tiny, red-faced infant in the polaroid that he keeps tucked away. 

The child he killed in Caracas couldn’t have been much older, he thinks. Quinn has regular nightmares now where he relives this event, but where he finds his own son in place of the nameless child with the flashlight. Glassy eyed, blood pooling around him.

If there had been any doubt before, Quinn muses, killing a child definitely secured his spot in one of the deepest circles of hell. That, or shooting a pregnant woman. That wasn’t a great move, either.

Quinn wonders idly how much more alcohol it would take to get rid of hollow aching in his chest as he downs the remnants of the bottle and closes his eyes.


End file.
